Grand Old War Party

Attending a reception at the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary debate in January, a candidate vying for the seat of retiring Congressman Henry Brown of SC’s 1st Congressional District was ribbing me about something I had said on the radio and added, with a smile, “I want to get you on my side.” At that moment and with zero forethought, I knew precisely what that candidate could do to get me on his side. Consider this an open letter to every Republican running in SC’s 1st Congressional District race.

Today, virtually every Republican is against spending and massive debt, and thank God for that. Every Republican is firmly opposed to President Obama and the Democrats’ agenda and thank God for that too. In this Tea Party-influenced 2010 election a renewed interest in Constitutional principle and limited government, whether genuine or just rhetorical, have become standard, default positions for Republican candidates and this is a wonderful development-until they go and muck it all up with another standard, Republican default position that contradicts their otherwise conservative platform.

Charleston’s The Post & Courier reported that during a recent debate, the candidates for the 1st Congressional District were asked: “to employ their best ’20/20 hindsight’ to say whether the invasion of Iraq was wise. (Paul) Thurmond said the invasion was justified because Saddam Hussein was a dictator and posed problems ‘we needed to resolve.’ (Stovall) Witte said that although weapons of mass destruction did not turn up, ‘We did the right thing.’ (Carroll) Campbell stated that ‘The best defense is a strong offense.'(Larry) Kobrovsky said yes and (Mark) Lutz said no. (Katherine) Jenerette said that America did not go there for democracy, ‘We were there for oil.’ But she said the invasion was a necessity because ‘If we weren’t there, the Russians would be there. The Chinese would be there.”

The Iraq War is considered by many to be the worst foreign policy disaster since Vietnam, though a kinder critic might settle for just calling it a mistake. Who says this? According to some Republicans, everyone does. During a foreign policy panel discussion in March sponsored by the libertarian CATO Institute, moderator Grover Norquist asked about the Iraq war: “Of Republicans in Congress, who would agree with the general analysis here that it was a mistake…” Replied Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA), “I think everyone would agree Iraq was a mistake.” Added panel contributor, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who voted for the authorization of military force in Iraq: “Well, now that we know that it cost a trillion dollars and all of these years and all of these lives and all of this blood, uh… All I can say is the people, everybody I know thinks it was a mistake to go in now… in retrospect, almost all of us think that was a horrible mistake.” Congressman John Duncan (R-TN), who also sat on the panel but did not vote for the Iraq war, agreed.

These Republicans are not alone. After returning from a second trip to Iraq in 2008, Senator Tom Coburn, a war supporter who Vice President Dick Cheney had campaigned for, said “I will tell you personally that I think it was probably a mistake going to Iraq.” Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC), perhaps best known for wanting to rename french fries, “freedom fries” in the House cafeteria to protest France’s opposition to US involvement in Iraq, now spends countless hours writing letters to the families of fallen soldiers in his district apologizing for supporting a war he now calls a mistake. “I wish it had never happened” regrets Jones, who also said of the last president “If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong. Congress must be told the truth.”

The truth about something as serious as war is what all Americans deserve, and yet what we see among so many conventional Republicans is a reflexive and unqualified support for any and all wars our government wages with little to no reflection. An earnest cost/benefit analysis of our adventure in Iraq should raise at least some degree of questioning or even regret, as it obviously has for the Republicans I’ve mentioned. The rationales for war given by most of the GOP candidates running for Henry Brown’s seat in SC are as varied as they are irrational, suggesting that even though the reasons for our mission in Iraq aren’t clear among its defenders, Republicans still feel the need to let voters know they support it. Sadly, such intellectual wobbliness reveals not simply a misguided concern for a proper defense, but that for much of the GOP-war has become a fetish.

And it isn’t funny anymore. I’m not asking every candidate to become Ron Paul (though it would be nice), only to finally question their government on this important issue as Republicans McClintock, Rohrabacher, Duncan, Coburn and Jones have. Whether running for SC’s 1st Congressional District or anywhere else, the ongoing inability or refusal to confront and acknowledge gross foreign policy mistakes tells me that such Republicans would be more than willing to repeat them in the future. This is completely unacceptable, it’s certainly unconscionable and definitely unconservative-but it is Republican. And it’s a problem.

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15 Responses to Grand Old War Party

Perpetual war republicans represent more than 90% of them. As Ron Paul commented earlier this month, only 11 in the house voted against the Iran sanctions, and I suspect many of them were democrats. Are you still trying to redeem this party of bloodsuckers? Forget the massive domestic spending issues with which you seem to give these cynical monsters shelter and lets send them down to perpetual defeat.

With respect Bob D, it’s not necessarily a ‘party’ thing. A cursory glance at history shows that Democrats have been even more willing to spill American (and foreign blood.) Wilson, FDR, Truman, Johnson, Clinton? At the risk of speaking for Jack, I think he (and I agree with him) believes there is still a chance to wake up the inherent skepticism exhibited by many Republicans and force them to apply it to our hyper-interventionist foreign policy, just as they would apply it to health care reform or other big government programs.
Unfortunately, the biggest principle among the GOP is not fidelity to the Constitution or to the Founder’s vision; it simply loyalty to party: loyalty in the face of superior principles and in the face of mounting evidence. If more of them recognize that one needs to place one’s trust in ideals (e.g. free markets, liberty, constitutional fidelity) and not simply in individual politicians with elephants next to their names, I believe they will wake up from their intellectual slumber.
…or I can just vote Libertarian again.
Peace be with you.

Just because you might think you stand behind a President, in war time or not, and call yourselves a Republican, don’t be suprised to find most if not all so-called Republicans are trying to get elected. The answers are all to typical of most Republicans of the past and present. What ever happened to the fact that this Country was attacked? We did not invite the islamic disciples of allah to attack, nor did our foreign policies dictate their decisions. This is islam, they are doing this because the koran demands it from them. If anything, I wish commentors would just say B.S. every time a politician tries to explain away the excuss they had before they were against it because they care nothing of the Constitution, if they did they would readily admit the information was being touted first by the demonrat party officials from the clinton admin.
The wmd’s were in fact send to Syria one year prior to the invasion, this is public knowledge and just because you claim to be a Republican, (trying to get elected) does not give you the right to openly lie to the public regarding their safety or because you say one thing to get elected and an other in private conversation. Your first loyality is to honesty, if you can’t be honest you cannot call yourself a Republican, a Democrat of Independent, you’re just a liar, period. Looking forward will history feel a need to call those who gave their all because their country called them to do so foolish to be a Patriot, stupid because they tried to save human lives by removing a tyrant (saddam) or will time record the moral cowardice of those claiming to take an Oath to Defend this Constitution just plain liars .

Retired Marine, there were no WMD’s in Iraq, if there had been we would not have attacked them. As we did not attack North Korea. Nor was the US attacked by “Islam” ! What an astonishly ignorant statement to make. We were attacked by citizens of one of the many awful rightist tyrannies we have wrongly supported over the years. As Ron Paul said they came over here because we have been over there for 60 years messing in their lives. They didn’t save lives by removing Saddam, they took many, many, many lives.
Reagan supported Iraq’s attack on Iran. So much for “human
rights” concerns by lying Bush & the Neoconmen.
Where do you get your “news” from ? Michael Savage ?
Big mouth Rush ? Fox News ? Bush violated the Constitution
with the “Patriot” Act, GITMO torture, lying us into war.
It’s exactly ignorant folk like you that have driven most sane people out of the GOP. History will reveal that the troops in Iraq were canon fodder for liars like Cheney and Bush. They fought for less than nothing.

Is it ignorance or stupidity that causes Republicans to love war and lick the boots of whoever’s in charge?

Maybe it’s something else. Going all the way back to the Spanish-American war in which Americans of all stripes reveled, the basic problem seems to be arrogance. If God made us a light to all nations, then whatever we do is by definition right, and it’s pointless–even blasphemous–to question it.

David Limbaugh made pretty much just this point on the Mark Levin radio show a few years ago: that anything America does is right. It isn’t torture, or warmongering, or inhumanity, or murder, if America does it. Any kind of evil is all right under this world view, since anything America does is necessarily anti-evil.

This left vs right paradigm is a bunch of crap, people. Both parties are complicit in the illegal warmongering and mass murdering of Iraqi’s to the tune of 1.3 million this go around, and 4 million during Pappy Bush’s reign of warmongering in 1991. Nothing can be pinned on the GOP that wasn’t aided and abetted by the complicit DINOCRATS in office across the aisle.

When you all get over bickering about who did what, remember that as evil and diabolical as John the Boner and Beyotch McCornhole and his buddy, Lindsay Grayhammer truly are, they have plenty of help from Nancy Pelousy and Hairy Redneck. Both parties voted for the illegal attack on April Glaspie’s “oh yeah, go ahead, Saddam, make our day, go into Kuwait” and this last fandango over WMD that existed only in Colon Blow Powel’s pants.

Larry Wilkerson blew the whistle on his old bosses, in the GOP who were driven by zionist turd Dougie Feith and Elliot Abrams, as well as Scumjob Libby, but he forgot to mention Mr. Zelikow, who also derailed the thorough investigation into 9/11 treason by both parties, as well, in their COVERING UP GOVERNMENT COMPLICITY.

Retired Marine’s notion that “they” attacked us is the most common fallacy I hear to support perpetual war on anybody our government wants to. The inability or unwillingness to distinguish between the people who did 9-11 and the entire Muslim religion is astounding to me. It’s like when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor if we had attacked Thailand in response because they’re all Asians.

Nobody in Iraq was even vaguely connected with 9-11 or the bombing of the USS Cole or anything else.

Yes, it was a mistake and some GOP members have admitted this. But, more importantly, it was illegal, and thus an international warcrime, and until we admit this we have made no progress. You see, as just a mistake, they could and did say that nevertheless they still had to see it through, and TAC’s Buchanan also took that position, but they refused to say it was a crime because it would have put their administration people, from Bush down, in jeopardy. So the Republican party had not the courage to do the right thing; in other words they covered up the crime. I was born a conservative and have been a lifelong Republican, but now I cannot wash away the bitterness of betrayal and the name Republican is now just a dirty word to me.

Sorry Jack, calling the unprovoked invasion of Iraq a mistake is much, much too charitable. How can a country be invaded by mistake? Oops, the troops took a wrong turn and ended up in Iraq instead of New Jersey? This was a criminal act perpetrated by criminals. Read accounts of the Nuremberg trial and you will see that scores of high-ranking German officials were hanged for precisely the same crime: warmongering (or crime against peace) such as the unprovoked invasions of Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium in 1939-40. I will acknowledge that many people may have been misled into supporting the invasion of Iraq, but to show contrition they need to do more than merely claim that they did not know it would cost that much and take so long. A crime is a crime even if it does not cost a lot.

While I agree that the GOP is the party of war, let’s remember that Democratic members of Congress overwhelmingly supported the war on Iraq. Only my congresswoman Babara Lee had the fortitude to stand up to the warmongering from the outset. While more Dems came to oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, they still are allowing Obama a free hand in continuing the blood shed begun by Chaney. They have been silent about any official investigations into the wars, torture and war crimes. I voted for Obama and will probably do so again. But he must be reigned in and we must have some accountability here. It’s time for the Dems to step up as well as Reps.

It was not my intention to let the demcrats off the hook on being a war party as well. As you point out, historically they are more of a war party than the republicans. Later, the “Scoop Jackson” wing of the democratic party represented perhaps a more incidious, hypocritical view of foreign policy even than the Bush administration. Modern so-called antiwar democrats haven’t lifted a finger to bring our troops home. The democrats lied their way into office the same way the Bush administration lied us into war.

But supporting prowar republicans is not the answer, even if they are running against prowar democrats. Vote a third party. Stop looking at the election as a horserace where you try to pick the winner. The neocons must be defeated first. And they are defeated if the democrats can only poll around 40% of the popular vote and yet they still win. The massive debt both parties have had a hand in will help in that defeat.

I wonder how many presidents have broken their own laws ? Clinton bombed and destroyed Yugoslavia , Bush also illeagally bombed Iraq . Now Obama continues . Tell me what was the differance in what NATO did to Yugoslavia and what the nazis did . Not any that anybody could see . So what has changed ?

As a few have already pointed out, Democrats are as guilty as Republicans in reflexively supporting any and all U.S. wars since 1945. As a former Democrat, now an Independent, I am disgusted by both parties’ jingoism and militarism. They are nothing more than two political wings of the U.S. Corporatist-Militarist Empire.